Modder manages to fit legendary 3dfx Voodoo 4 GPU inside a laptop

The legendary 3dfx Voodoo GPUs have popped up a few times in news headlines in recent years, as some of the rarest models hit ebay for auctions. Back in 2000, GPU makers were focusing solely on desktop solutions, so the 3dfx Voodoo cards never got ported to laptops in commercial form. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, with all the technological advancements, a 3dfx fan actually managed to modify a Voodoo 4 desktop GPU to fit inside a laptop.

Granted, the laptop in question is no slim and light model from recent years, but a 15.6-inch Dell Precision M4800 workstation from 2013, which was powered by up to an Intel Core i7-4950HQ with 32 GB DDR3 RAM and an Nvidia Quadro K2100M professional GPU. Even with the thicker profile of 256 mm, however, modder “sdz” still had to go through a few hoops to fit a VSA-100 GPU in the Dell laptop.

First, the modder designed a custom MXM PCB that is roughly three times smaller (7x8 cm) than the original desktop PCB. Sdz admits that the PCB is “a bit crammed” since it integrates the Voodoo 4 chip, a PCI-to-PCI bridge, an FPGA, a resolution scaler that is usually featured on a monitor, a microcontroller, power supplies and various smaller circuits. Additionally, the GPU benefits from up to 64 MB of VRAM, 32 MB more than the original Voodoo 4 4500 design. The modder also made an MXM carrier board that connects to a desktop PC via a PCIe connection, to troubleshoot issues easier.

For the fully-functional MXM board, resolution compatibility is offered between 640 x 480 and 1600 x 1024. The Dell laptop is using a 1080p panel, but support for this resolution is problematic on the VSA-100 chip. Overclocking the MXM variant was a bit tricky. This process only works with the Voodoo 5 Overclocker 1.0 in Windows XP. Sdz was able to push the core clocks and RAM clock to 200 MHz at 2.9 V VCORE up from default 166 MHz. The overclocked configuration produced the highest ever Voodoo 4 score amounting to 2148 points in 3DMark 2001 SE at default settings 1024x768 32bpp.

Apparently, there still are a few  issues to be solved, like some resolutions not working properly with the scaler and the image appearing shifted by 5 pixels to the right. Furthermore, the 85.9º C idle temps and 87.6º C load temps seem a bit high at default 2.5 V VCORE and 166 MHz core clocks, but the modder claims these are within spec, as the old equivalent of TJ max is set to 125º C.